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Who Really Cooks Your Food?

HERE'S how it was supposed to work: Thomas Keller, star chef of the Napa Valley, temporarily shutters his renowned restaurant, the French Laundry, and opens a feverishly anticipated restaurant in New York. Per Se opens in the Time Warner Center in a burst of glory, with Mr. Keller in the kitchen. Once the New York team is up to speed, the chef de cuisine, Jonathan Benno, takes the reins at Per Se, freeing Mr. Keller to fly back to California and reopen the French Laundry with its chef de cuisine, Eric Ziebold. Finally, with two acclaimed restaurants thousands of miles apart, Mr. Keller joins the international corps of red-eyed chefs who shuttle between multiple kitchens, with well-honed chefs de cuisine holding down the fort at each end.

Instead, shortly after its Feb. 16 opening, Per Se was closed by a fire in the kitchen. Mr. Ziebold gave notice. From New York, Mr. Keller is managing the (delayed) reopening of the French Laundry; he has not yet named a chef de cuisine there. And Per Se quietly reopened on May 1, with Mr. Benno in charge at the stove on six days' experience, facing a now-ravenous New York audience.

''Obviously, I am incredibly anxious,'' Mr. Keller said. ''I've spent years trying to make sure this wouldn't happen. One faulty electric cable, and that was that.''

Whatever happens next in Mr. Keller's drama will depend on the talents and abilities of two behind-the-scenes players: his chefs de cuisine. Alert restaurant customers already know that when a second in command is announced on a restaurant menu under the title of chef de cuisine or executive sous-chef, it signifies that the chef whose name is on the marquee might be a few blocks, or a few time zones, away.

American chefs can now command the kind of global respect once reserved for the French, and many are succumbing to the siren song of expansion. Even the purists are starting to cave: in addition to Thomas Keller, the legendary sticklers David Bouley and Charlie Trotter have put their names on restaurants thousands of miles from their home kitchens. Last year, Daniel Boulud opened a Café Boulud in Palm Beach; Jean-Georges Vongerichten's new place in Shanghai is his 15th restaurant.

Meanwhile, who's minding the stoves?

''People always ask, 'Who does the cooking when you're not here?' '' Mr. Vongerichten said last week at his flagship restaurant, Jean Georges, at Columbus Circle. ''It's the same person who does it when I am here: the chef de cuisine.''

As Tony Soprano needs captains, unquestionably loyal henchmen who know exactly what the boss would do in any situation, chefs need chefs de cuisine to run their kitchens, from hiring and firing to choosing between chives and chervil as the garnish for a new dish. And some do a great deal more than that.

''Have I served dishes at the French Laundry that the chef has never tasted?'' said Eric Ziebold, who resigned last month after five years at his post and will become chef at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington. ''Sure.''

At ambitious restaurants like the French Laundry, where the menu changes by 30 percent each day, chefs de cuisine must become more than deputies, devising new dishes in the style of their mentors. ''It's a position of extraordinary trust,'' said Zach Bell, chef de cuisine at Café Boulud in Palm Beach, where an entree, whether it is a Boulud classic or a Bell creation, costs about $35.

Many American chefs, like Mario Batali, Tom Colicchio and Suzanne Goin, have built strings of restaurants in their home cities, and manage to personally oversee them all. Entrepreneurs like Wolfgang Puck and Todd English have gone another route, opening chains of low-rent spinoffs that demand little attention from the chef.

But running serious kitchens via long distance requires a deep bench. A chef with an expansion plan needs a corps of chefs de cuisine who are handpicked for loyalty, modesty and stability -- qualities that are often in short supply among talented young cooks. ''Any sous-chef in my kitchen is a good enough cook to become chef de cuisine,'' Daniel Boulud said. ''But only the ones who can keep a cool head, teach my cuisine and philosophy, and understand my business will get the job.''

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Chefs with multiple restaurants frequently talk about the philosophy that permeates their kitchens, as a way of describing how someone else can cook their food without following their recipes. (Alain Ducasse, a pioneer in empire building, famously answered this quandary with a sweeping, ''I am in all of my kitchens all of the time.'')

Some chefs, like Mr. Vongerichten, have a chef de cuisine in every kitchen (or two, in his case; Tony DiSalvo and Gregory Brainin share the title at the Columbus Circle restaurant). Others, like Mr. Boulud, always keep one kitchen under their personal command. ''Restaurant Daniel is my home,'' he said. ''A chef needs a kitchen where he can stay connected with the food.''

Mr. Boulud's chefs de cuisine have often managed to become highly visible chefs in their own right without leaving the Boulud nest. Andrew Carmellini of Café Boulud in New York and Jean François Bruel of DB Bistro Moderne have both won James Beard awards for their work -- a rare acknowledgment for a chef de cuisine -- but have remained within the well-funded Boulud organization.

But more often, chefs de cuisine quickly leave to feather their own nests. Many of New York's top young chefs are recent alumni of the kitchens of Mr. Vongerichten, David Bouley, Alfred Portale and a handful of other influential chefs. ''The patience of young chefs has been greatly reduced,'' Mr. Bouley said. ''That French tradition of apprenticeship is almost gone, and now the young Americans think they don't have to learn to butcher their own meat, or make their own pastry.''

''Of course we all want our own place, with our name on the door,'' said Guillermo Tellez, who is chef de cuisine in Charlie Trotter's kitchen at Restaurant C in Los Cabos, Mexico, and held the same post at the Chicago mother ship for more than 10 years. ''But I'm not in a rush. I've seen that blow up too many times.''

Mr. Tellez, like many of his colleagues, is charged with recreating a chef's elaborate cuisine and high standards under more challenging conditions. The part of the Baja peninsula in which C is located, he said, is a government-designated pure zone, which means that almost no produce can be imported from the United States or the Mexican mainland. Only frozen meat is allowed, he said, and since the opening rush in February, he has had little time to establish the network of local purveyors and farmers so beloved of Mr. Trotter and other top American chefs.

''I got a farmer to raise quails, so that I could have the eggs, and we're trying to rig up a cool house for growing vegetables in the hot season,'' he said. ''But a lot of things are just not available here.''

Eric Johnson, chef de cuisine of Jean Georges in Shanghai, also opened Mr. Vongerichten's Paris restaurant, Market. ''Well, it's different,'' he said of sourcing Western ingredients in China, ''but FedEx makes everything possible.'' Other than bamboo hearts instead of artichoke hearts on the famous orange-dusted prawns, and a few other cosmetic changes, Mr. Johnson's menu is an uncanny recreation of dinner at Jean Georges in New York, right down to the scallops with caper-raisin emulsion and caramelized cauliflower.

''That's what our customers want,'' Mr. Johnson said. ''The greatest hits, the same dishes they had in New York.''

''The Shanghai-style stuff Jean-Georges did at 66,'' he said, referring to Mr. Vongerichten's Chinese restaurant in TriBeCa, ''I could never do that here.''

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A version of this article appears in print on May 12, 2004, on Page F00001 of the National edition with the headline: Who Really Cooks Your Food?. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe